Chinese Women

Chinese women in History

In this section we look at the changing attitudes to women in China over the centuries.

Early dynasties

During the early period in common with other world cultures the role of women in China was more significant than in later centuries.
The tomb of Lady Hao (Fù Hǎo妇好 d. 1200BCE) of the Shang dynasty reveals that women in this early dynasty could reach a high position, and it is believed that she led military campaigns.
However men soon started to take the principal roles in society. The attitude to women changed as can be seen from one of the early Classics, in the ‘Book of Odes’ (Shijing), written in the later Zhou dynasty there is the Zhan Yang ➚ admonishment:

哲夫成城、哲妇倾城懿厥哲妇、为枭为鸱妇有长舌、维厉之阶乱匪降自天、生自妇人匪教匪诲、时维妇寺

Clever men build cities; Clever women topple them
Beautiful these clever women may be; But they are owls and kites
Women have long tongues; That lead to ruin
Disorder does not come down from heaven; It is produced by women
Those from whom come no lessons, no instruction; Are women and eunuchs.

To counterbalance this view there is also an old Chinese proverbA man knows, but a woman knows better.

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Han dynasty women

The Han dynasty set many conventions and traditions that lasted for the remaining two thousand years of Imperial rule. The leading doctrine became Confucian which sought to put everyone in their proper relationship and in this regard women were put below men.

A bride serves her husband,
Just as she served her father
Her voice cannot be heard
Nor can her body or shadow be seen
With her husband's father and elder brothers
She has no conversation.

According to Confucius, women should first be totally subservient to her parents and then to her husband. Women were taught to take the lowliest role and undertake the most menial duties. They were instructed to follow the Three Obediences and Four Virtues 三从四德Sān cóng sì dé: obedient to father, to husband and to sons as a widow; and the virtues: morality; genteel speech; modest appearance and diligence . Confucius himself divorced his wife after four years of marriage for no apparent good reason. The birth of a girl became a cause of regret that it was not a son. The tone is set in the Han classic by Liu Xiang ➚ ‘Biographies of Heroic Women’ in which the lives of 125 gallant and unselfish women are described. Another Han classic written by Ban Zhao ➚ ‘Admonitions to Girls’ teaches the proper subservient behavior of girls. Unstinting and long service to men was the aim to be followed by women. She describes how a baby girl on its third day of life would be placed under the bed to emphasize her inferior position in life. Ban Zhao is noted as the first significant female historian. She came from a famous family with General Ban Chou ➚ and historian Ban Gu ➚ as brothers. In general as women were regarded as the inferior gender women were punished more severely for offenses than men. The strict division of sexes according to Confucian precepts is set out in the Liji Qu Li I ➚ ‘Rules of propriety’:

Male and female should not sit together (in the same apartment), nor have the same stand or rack for their clothes, nor use the same towel or comb, nor let their hands touch in giving and receiving.

The rule forbidding the passing of any object between husband and wife was widely followed, they were not allowed to risk touching hands .

After the Han dynasty the custom of foot binding of girls from a very early age kept them house bound. The tradition lasted from the Sui to the Qing dynasty and was at times inflicted on half of all girls. It was seen as a badge of wealth of a household because it implied that the family was rich enough to not need women to carry out physical work. In poor areas the feet of women were not bound so they had to share the work of husbands in manual labor. Slightly richer families would have girls' feet bound and live out their lives indoors, bringing up the family.

However, another strong Chinese tradition could elevate women's status above men. Subservience to parents was more important than from wife to husband so a man had to do whatever his widowed mother wished, and some mothers were the dominant force in the household.

Traditionally the ideal woman was slim, delicate and refined. Women did not mingle in society and were rarely seen on the streets; they avoiding being seen walking; rich women traveled in sedan chairs with their faces hidden behind veils and curtains. Even doctors (all men) were forbidden contact, a woman had to indicate on a special ivory model as to where she felt pain so the doctor could diagnose without touching. Foreigners reported visiting towns and not seeing a single woman. Ideally a woman's mouth and lips should resemble a cherry and the teeth should be white and straight. The face should be egg-shaped not round and the eyes like almonds. The body should be slim, supple and curved with narrow hips and small breasts.

Moving on to the Tang dynasty some popular love stories were written promoting love not duty as the bedrock of relationships. The increasing wealth of Song dynasty China enabled women to take a more prominent role: as poets; courtesans; singers; running inns and so although many were confined to home carrying out child-rearing they did have some greater freedom. Another crucial role they played was in the careful and lengthy process of matchmaking for their children. Learning to read and write was acceptable for richer women but making a living as a poet was very rare. Women wrote many letters but were effectively blocked out of the scholarly elite with only one or two exceptions.

However the general attitude to education is summarized in this quote
“ Why should we think ? Our husbands are kind to us; we have but one dream, and that to make them happy, and if there were more thinking than that our foreheads would.”

Later in the Yuan dynastyGuan Daosheng ➚ was the first female painter to achieve widespread fame; proving that attitudes to women were not universal. In the 18th century 'The Dream of the Red Chamber ➚' was a book that championed love and romance in relationships compared to the reality of the traditional arranged marriage. Moves towards the equal treatment of women had to wait a long time. It was one of the principles set out by the Taiping rebels although not actually brought widely into effect.

Imperial women

The Empress held great power in the Imperial palace, but most wielded their influence from behind the Emperor's throne. There are three noted women who rose to rule in their own right. The first is Dowager Empress Lu ➚ who took control after death of the first Han Emperor Liu Bang. She was the effective ruler of China for seven years and sought to bring her own family into power. On her death in 180BCE most of her family members were put to death.

Empress Wu (Wu Zetian)
Image taken from An 18th century album of portraits of 86 emperors of China, with Chinese historical notes. Originally published/produced in China, 18th century. (British Library, Shelfmark Or. 2231) available under a Creative Commons license ➚.

On the rise of another strong Imperial dynasty, the Tang, Empress Wu Zetian ruled first through Emperor Gaozong and then as regent for their two infant emperor sons Zhongzong and Ruizong. In 690 the Empress took power under her own right, forcing Ruizong to abdicate as she founded the new 'Zhou' dynasty. She reigned for 15 years and proved a very astute, intelligent but ruthless leader until her affection for two young lovers led to her downfall and Zhongzong was restored for a short time as Tang emperor. She sought to equalize the role of women in society and briefly women were allowed to sit the Imperial Examinations.

The third great Imperial woman was Dowager Empress Cixi who reigned over the dying embers of the Qing dynasty. As with Empress Lu she ruled as regent over infant emperors but never took supreme power in her own name. Her life is still being reappraised, once blamed for decadence, incompetence and opulence she is now being seen more as a victim of her time, trying to bring order to a fatally flawed system.

Modern times in China

Young girl dressed in soldier attire at the arrival of the press plane in Beijing, China. Young girl pictured is not identified. 21st Feb 1972.
Image by Byron E. Schumaker, ca. 1935- available under a Creative Commons license ➚.

Towards the end of the Qing dynasty, fueled by increasing contact with the west, women began to complain about their plight. An early fighter for republicanism and the rights of women was Qiu Jin ➚ [1875-1907], she published this piece in 1904:

We, the two hundred million women of China, are the most unfairly treated objects on this earth. If we have a decent father, then we will be all right at the time of our birth; but if he is crude by nature, or an unreasonable man, he will immediately start spewing out phrases like “Oh what an ill-omened day, here’s another useless one.” If only he could, he would dash us to the ground. He keeps repeating, “She will be in someone else’s family later on,” and looks at us with cold or disdainful eyes.

Before many years have passed, without anyone’s bothering to ask if it’s right or wrong, they take out a pair of snow-white bands and bind them around our feet, tightening them with strips of white cotton; even when we go to bed at night we are not allowed to loosen them the least bit, with the result that the flesh peels away and the bones buckle under. The sole purpose of all this is just to ensure that our relatives, friends, and neighbors will all say, “At the so-and-so’s the girls have small feet.” Not only that, when it comes time to pick a son-in-law, they rely on the advice of a couple of shameless matchmakers, caring only that the man’s family have some money or influence; they don’t bother to find out if his family background is murky or good, or what his character is like, or whether he’s bright or stupid ? they just go along with the arrangement. When it’s time to get married and move to the new house, they hire the bride a sedan chair all decked out with multicolored embroidery, but sitting shut up inside it one can barely breathe. And once you get there, whatever your husband is like, as long as he is a family man they will tell you you were blessed in a previous existence and are being rewarded in this one. If he turns out no good, they will tell you it’s “retribution for an earlier existence” or “the aura was all wrong”.

The real change came with the foundation of the Republic of China when the May Fourth movement founded in 1919 pushed for the equality of women. These changes only helped some women living in the cities, they were not adopted everywhere, universal reform of the age old marriage traditions had to wait until Mao came to power in 1949. The Marriage law of 1950 removed many of the traditional rules and brought in a great deal of equality between the sexes compared to the old days. Mao proclaimed in 1952 that 'women hold up half the sky' demolishing the age old tradition that only men had a link to heaven. Women could now divorce men, and men could not keep concubines. There were no longer dowries or division of estates to favor just sons. Women were allowed and encouraged to take up jobs that used to be men's preserve including administration; working in heavy industry and the fields.

A national Women's Day is held on March 8th each year to mark the special contribution of women. It is a half-day holiday for all women and was inaugurated in 1975.

However it has to be said that since about 1990 the status of women in China has gradually diminished. All the higher positions in government and commerce go to men and there is huge pressure for women to be attractive to men and the ambition is to marry well rather than have a separate career. Sadly all the pressure takes its toll, China is the only country where there are more female suicides than male. It is now becoming common for the very rich to have one or more mistresses who are given their own houses.

Female University student, 2012

Traditional views about women

Drawing by William Alexander, draughtsman of the Macartney Embassy to China in 1793. Chinese noble woman wears a long robe of silk or satin, accompanied with under-vest and drawers of taffeta. Her hair is smoothed with oil and closely twisted, and fastened with bodkins of gold and silver; across her forehead she wears a band, from which descends a peak of velvet, decorated with a diamond or pearl, and artificial flowers, are arranged on each side of her head. She wears earrings and a string of perfumed beads. The use of cosmetics was well known among the wealthy Chinese ladies, painting the face both white and red, was in common practice; the eyebrows were brought to be very narrow, black, and arched. The small shoes are elegantly wrought, with ankles covered by loose bandage. Her son has queues of hair on each side of the head, as was the fashion. The servant holds a green parasol over the lady. He wears a ring of brass or tutenag. Image taken from The Costume of China, illustrated in forty-eight colored engravings, published in London in 1805.
Image by William Alexander (1767-1816) ➚ available under a Creative Commons license ➚.

The ancient Daoist tradition of yin and yang has had a deep influence on the lives of men and women. The yin is identified with the female: the receptive, the cool and the dark; its opposite the yang is light, powerful and male. As these properties are opposites, this tradition polarized the position of men and women in society.

Another key tradition that has led to the inferior position of women is that only men could perform the ancestral rites, without these rites the ancestors would bring misfortune on their living descendents. It was this belief that required a father to produce a son. The worship of ancestors was a phallic ritual, as it sought the fertility of women and the soil through men.

Buddhist nunneries have proved a refuge at time of troubles for women over the centuries. Due to the Confucian doctrine of superiority of the male, the alternative Daoist and Buddhist religions were attractive to women. The missionary efforts of Christians also recruited many women who could then study to gain skills normally forbidden to them. However this proved counterproductive when the work of Christian missionaries was seen as a foreign and alien doctrine at the time of the Boxer Rebellion.

The leadership of the People's Republic since 1949 has been one of stability with an emphasis of continuity and steady progress. This was not the case in the early years. With China such a major power it is important to understand the background to the handful of people who have led China in a new direction.

Cultivation of silkworms was a female dominated occupation, it was labor intensive but not arduous and much of it could be done indoors. As it was considered unseemly to expose skin except for face and hands, working in fields was rare, women were restricted to the house and garden. The gender roles were reinforced by superstitions, for example: women could not work in fields because the potatoes they plant would not sprout and melon seeds planted would be bitter. However the lot of women was not unduly onerous, they lived within the family home with the children and had the companionship of other women in the extended family. It was often the husband's mother who sought to control her son's household and this could cause great upset to his wife. The Confucian doctrine of honoring all wishes of parents means a husband has to go along with his mother's wishes for running the household and this did sometimes lead to tyrannical rule.

Women in Chinese Characters

The Chinese radical nu (女nǚ) is used to give a female connotation to all sorts of characters. It gives both positive and negative meanings and is rooted in historic attitudes. There is good好hǎo made up of woman and child that is definitely positive. The use in peace安ān with a woman under a roof suggests the home as a peaceful haven.

As you might expect the character for marrying a woman娶qǔ has a female component, the top section hand and ear represents take, with no evidence of love. A character showing the early high status of women is 姓xìngsurname that suggests that family names in early times were passed from mother to her children.
jiāo娇 has the meaning of tender; lovable; charming. Female relatives often include the female radical; so there is 妈māmother姐jiěelder sister妹mèiyounger sister and of course 妇fùwoman ; 她tāshe; her.
There are many more characters, some showing the historical attitude: 奴nú is slave and 奸jiān is crafty; disloyal; adulterous. The old form of the jian character was 姦 made up of three copies of the 'nu' female radical. The character 嫉jí is envy; jealousy while 妙miàoingenious; and finally 妍yán is beautiful.

On the foundation of the Peoples' Republic in 1949, attitudes and names changed. The traditional term for wife 内人nèi rén meaning person indoors became 愛人ài rénloved one. The equality was underlined by the universal greeting 同志tóng zhìcomrade which literally means same purpose instead of 'Mr.' and 'Mrs.'. However Comrade has now disappeared from normal use .

The Chinese word for marriage is 婚姻hūnyīn while the wedding ceremony is 婚礼hūnlǐ. Both characters contain the woman radical 女. With regard to marriage the character most associated with it is called 双喜shuāngxǐ meaning double happiness ➚ - very appropriate for a wedding. The two joined characters 喜喜 will be seen at weddings in the form of paper-cuts and other representations.

Untangling the religions of China is quite a struggle for those unfamiliar with the country. There are three main belief systems Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism that have co-existed in relative harmony for over a thousand years. Islam, Christianity and Ancestor veneration are also described in our comprehensive treatment of the subject.

Marriage in China

Marriages in China were arranged by the parents sometimes with the aid of a matchmaker (usually a woman hong niang红娘 or mei ren媒人). An informal agreement for a marriage alliance between two families sometimes took place even before children were born. The matchmaker took astrological readings of the potential matches checking for compatibility. The readings centered on the bazi 八字eight characters, recording the exact hour, day, month and year of birth. The matchmaker would then make a choice and write the bazi on red paper to give to the families. If both sets of parents approved, gifts were exchanged and the couple were then betrothed. A wife would not see her husband before the marriage ceremony itself; indeed a chance meeting between the betrothed was considered a possible reason to call off the marriage. Love marriages without parental consent were very much frowned upon. If an engaged man died then the fiancee could choose to be treated as a widow and sometimes adopted a nephew of her intended as her own son, thus continuing the male line of the deceased. If she chose not to live as a widow, the dead man would sometimes be married to an unmarried woman who had died, and so maintain a unique pairing.

Marrying a stranger

There was an ancient rule of always marrying outside the extended family, you could not marry someone with the same surname even if very distantly related. In rural China one large family or clan tended to live together in one village; so this custom required seeking a wife from further afield. This rule had the repercussion that sons were preferred to daughters because once married, daughters would leave the village and would no longer help with her family's work. A bride lost contact with her own family and looked on the husband's parents as her new parents. Importance was put on the male line, so that even though you could not marry someone with the same family name you could marry a cousin if they had a different family name, this is because the male line was considered dominant. It was common for one family to inter-marry with only a few other families.
The traditional marriage law applied equally to the Imperial family as well, forcing an Emperor to elevate the Empress's family to influence, which proved a cause of intrigue and revolt down the centuries. The Empress had most power when the Emperor died and she operated as Dowager Empress until a young heir came of age. As the Empress's family lost influence on the heir's accession, they would often desperately sought to delay it.

Once a betrothal had been made it was hard to break and the engagement could last for years. Sometimes people were betrothed while still very young even though they would not marry until many years later. In most cases the man would be a couple of years older than the woman. Officially the age for marriage was between 20 and 30 for men and between 15 to 20 for women. Failure to marry was seen as aberrant and officially discouraged.

In modern times we are used to a low infant mortality rate. In China in 2005 the rate was about 2%, but as recently as the 1930s mortality rates were as high as 50% or even higher. To be sure to leave surviving children women had many babies and each birth had a high risk to both mother and child. Child-bearing put a heavy burden on women over many centuries.

Child brides

Among the poorest there was the tradition of ‘child brides’ 童养媳tóng yǎng xí as a way of allowing girls to survive rather than likely starve to death. The girl as a young child was given as a ‘bride’ to a wealthier family, although sometimes some money was paid. The girl was treated no better than a slave by her new family until eventually becoming a wife. The strong gender imbalance resulted in a shortage of women to marry, the child bride system was a way to guarantee that a wife could be found.

Divorce

Although divorce in China was illegal, an informal divorce or permanent separation (instigated by the man) was fairly straightforward, it was actually easier to break off a marriage than a betrothal. However if a substantial dowry had been paid this would cause friction between the families. The divorce laws favored the husband but the wife had some grounds for leaving her husband, but re-marriage after a divorce was rare. Families used to shop around for the best wife at the best cost for their sons. A family with many daughters were in financial trouble as they lose the work and income of the daughter when she marries hence the saying “There is no thief like a family of five daughters”. As the daughter moves away to another family and village when she marries, the family that had invested in her upbringing receive no benefit. So the tradition of favoring sons is based on cold economics rather than any misogyny. Female infanticide and abandonment is much exaggerated, it took place only when families were literally dying of starvation and had no way to support the new baby. Although boys were preferred, girls were still very much prized and loved. Those with a strong belief in Buddhism could justify infanticide on the basis that it was in a child's best interest; as instead of likely starvation the next re-incarnation of the child would be likely to have better luck.

Wedding Day

On the wedding day the bridegroom went to the bride's family house, where his access was ritually denied until he had presented gifts. Emblems of the dragon and phoenix were often used on gifts, as they represent conjugal bliss. A feast then took place but the bride remained in her bridal chamber awaiting her new husband who arrived at night. Symbolizing future parenthood a child would often be in the bridal chamber to greet the bride and groom. The couple traditionally kowtowed at the ancestral altar honoring all the parents. The bride permanently moved away from her own birth family to that of her husband. Red is the lucky color for marriage and many decorations are in red. Lucky money is exchanged in red envelopes and the bride and groom drink wine from two cups linked by a red string. This honors the legend that the God of Marriage links the bride and groom with an invisible red thread from birth. Other items in the bridal chamber was copper vessels (because 铜tóng ‘copper’ sounds the same as 同tóng ‘together’ and also shoes as shoes stay together as a pair. A salvo of firecrackers are set off as at other festivals. An ax (fu 斧) wrapped in a red cloth is the traditional gift to the bride. It symbolizes the end of virginity but also fu is a homophone for happiness 福. A gift of chopsticks (kuai zi 筷子) symbolizes the hope for newlyweds to have children quickly because kuaizi sounds the same as 快子 ‘fast sons’. In places there was a tradition of 'disturbing the new house' where the shyness of the new couple was broken with games and encouragement by the neighbors. These traditions have pretty much disappeared although some matchmakers do still operate.

There was a great rush to get married should the Emperor become ill. This happened because should the Emperor die there could be no marriages for the period of mourning - sometimes a whole year for those at court, 100 days for ordinary folk. It was also forbidden to marry in the three years of mourning following the death of a parent.

Our extensive section on Chinese festivals gives the dates and backgrounds on over 30 of them. Gives details on the origin and observance as well as a handy diary for when they will next fall. Essential when planning a trip to China.

Golden Orchid Society

In southern China, in the nineteenth century the Golden Orchid Society of women rejected marriage with men. They vowed to commit suicide rather than enter a forced marriage. Some of the members married as lesbian couples, others abstained from all sex. The authorities saw the society as a threat and took measures to brutally repress it.

Chinese Widows

Traditionally when the husband died the widow would not remarry. However in rural communities a childless widow who could not be supported by her in-laws, sometimes remarried a brother or cousin of her dead husband. It was not uncommon for a widow to commit suicide, this was not considered dishonorable as it is in Christian countries. There was no punishment for attempted suicide and Chinese religion does not punish suicides in the afterlife, indeed some famous suicides had honor heaped on them as in the case of Qu Yuan. However far more women than men committed suicide, especially young childless widows. This was partly due to the stigma attached to remarriage. Memorial arches (a form of Paifang牌坊) used to be built to commemorate pious widows who had refused to remarry. However the situation was not equal between the sexes; it was expected for men to quickly re-marry after the death of his wife.

Concubines

There is a widespread mistaken belief that Chinese tradition supported polygamy (multiple wives), the actual situation was more complex. A man had only one wife but he could also take concubines. A concubine was a lower class of wife who lived at the house and if she bore him children they would be treated equally to his wife's own children. It was expensive for a man to support a wife and concubine(s) and so the tradition was restricted to the better off and inevitably became a badge of pride as to how many concubines he could support. The Emperor would have hundreds if not thousands of concubines but there would still be only one Empress. The Emperor divided his concubines according to grade, there were fourteen ranks from ‘beauty’ to ‘brilliant companion’ and ‘favorite beauty’, living in separate halls with exotic names such as ‘Residence of Seeking Perfection’. The concubine had a scaled down version of the betrothal ceremony, with money often given to the concubine's parents. The wife could expel a concubine without the husband's consent so they worked as her willing servants and were usually of lower social class. Each concubine would have a separate small dwelling within the home. Men would sometimes take concubines when his wife failed to produce the son that tradition dictated, it was done openly and without the animosity that might be expected. The practice was made illegal under the Republican government, but it was not really until the marriage law of 1950 under the People's Republic that concubinage came to an end.

The most famous example of a concubine reaching high prestige has already been mentioned, it was Dowager Empress Cixi. Because she bore Emperor Xianfeng his only surviving son, even though a concubine, she became the Dowager Empress on Emperor Tongzhi's accession in 1871.